The temperatures are what will confuse and surprise people. It really does run this hot - Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, even though they are similar architectures, are made on a different process and using different transistor designs. This has seemingly had a very large effect on how the processor reacts. We may see it improve over time as the process matures, but as it stands, 95C at 1.30V is a real value - for a liquid cooler outside a case. So in a case it would perhaps be worse.

Wouldn't this be expected from a pure physics perspective. Since a 22nm node has drastically shrunk the surface area in contact with the heat sink. Especially with the IGP off. The heat is now concentrated to a much smaller area, so it is all the more difficult to transfer that heat to the heat sink.Reply

That's true, given the same heat; however, if you're using less current (lower voltage), the heat generated should also be less. If the current:surface area is a perfect ratio, the correlation of heat should also be close to 1. So as size decreases, so should heat.

The problem, though, is that the efficiency of the transistors are questionable. Sure there may be more, but because you're creating them at a smaller scale, it could be less efficient releasing more electricity/heat to the external system.

In addition, the materials used in the tri-gate setup is unknown, which could also impact the heat retained in the system.

As Ian stated, as the manufacturing process matures, they could find ways to improve the process. This could lead to reduction in heat, and thus an increase in performance.Reply

Would it be possible to adjust the graphs to have similar ranges for their axis? It'd the make the two first two graphs at stock and 4.4 Ghz much easier to compare. This would also apply to the constant 1.25V graph and the underclocking graph.

Also would it be able to label each point on the PovRay test with the clock speed at that particular voltage (or are these values obtained at a constant clock)?Reply

Apologies, I should make it more clear. The graph with a single line of Temperature against voltage should be read in conjunction with the overclock graph. So at 0.90 V, we are at 3.9 GHz, 1.1V @ 4.4 GHz, 1.15V @ 4.6, 1.20V @ 4.7, 1.30V @ 4.8. Which means that perhaps 1.15 V at 4.6 GHz is a happy medium.

That probably would better read with the "to" replaced with "than", a word that means a comparison. In your sentence above, Ian, to what does the phrase "to Sandy Bridge" refer? Do you mean in a comparison to Ivy Bridge, perhaps? Then, the word you used, "to", is wholly inappropriate and meaningless. Instead, that sentence would more properly read with the "to" replaced with "than", a word that means a comparison, i.e. I'd rather have a bottle in front of me THAN a frontal lobotomy.

So, it'd read, "Ivy Bridge is now released and behaves differently than Sandy Bridge." The sentence now makes the comparison you were trying to say but failed. Reply

I could also write "Ivy Bridge is now released and it behaves differently to Sandy Bridge." or a variety of other ways. Along with this, I have to deal with avoiding British idioms for a mainly American based audience, as well as the issue of company plurality which seems very alien to me. However, if you do find other areas of English in one of my articles that perhaps need a touch up, please be tactful and email me (ian AT anandtech DOT com) rather than habitually pick out one phrase and demonstrate your horrific disgust about it on a public forum. Writers work their fingers to the bone to get some of these articles done in time, and we would appreciate it if you didn't beat down their hard work without at least attempting to contact them first as a polite indication.

The form you used is fine in British English, so he is wrong and crass. I don't think you should need to kowtow and (unreasonably) modify your language just for those who speak another form of English, given that it is perfectly understandable.

Some exposure to the outside world might be an educational and enlightening experience for them :-).Reply

actually there's nothing wrong with using "to" instead of "than" when making comparisons. Google it to see its regular use, u can then proceed on your littl grammar nazi crusade and email the thousands of people on the internet that use "to" to make comparisons. I'm assuming ure not a native speaker as a native speaker correcting another native speaker on how to use the language correctly is laughable.

I'm an English teacher and would never mark such a sentence wrong. Language develops, especially one as international as English which is used in all corners of the world and will develop little differences. Reply

C'DaleRider doesn't mind looking stupid. He made a similarly ignorant and rude grammar comment a few weeks ago. He's just trolling, trying to disrupt the comment stream and generally mess up a good thing. That's the way some people are, sad to say.Reply

If you shrink crystalline Si dimensions, heat conductivity breaks down as less phonon modes can fit into the volume and contribute to heat conductivity. For the fin-FET like tri-gate design this should be even more severe, as we're quenching the phonon modes in 2 dimensions. Might well be that the problem is to get the heat out of the transistors in Intels 22 nm process. If this is correct, things are only going to get worse at even smaller process nodes. The problem is then not about putting heat into the system, but rather to get it conducted even to the heat spreader or back side of the chip.Reply

Small case + not-so-good cooling + power usage figures matter / low noise is important= IB @ 4.6-ish will be the better choice(uses less power / will be faster than SB @ 4.6-ish with the better IPC from IB)

Ian hit ~4.5 GHz at a mere 1.05 V with IB. That's significantly less power consumption than anything SB could do in this performance range. Top clock may be a bit lower, but you're saving tons of electricity with IB. And if you're buying new: IB should be cheaper anyway. Exception: getting a good deal on a used chip, saving 100+$, would probably be worth it.Reply

The sweet spot for performance vs heat seems to be at 4.5 GHz @ 1.1v. I've been reading the IB threads in the CPU OC forums on Anandtech. The few enthusiast members that have been testing 3570K haven't come close to 4.5 GHz at 1.1v. In fact, the best I've seen is 4.5 GHz at 1.236v.

Well done Ian, you covered a lot of ground and all the relevant points in a nice, graphical way.

If you ask me, 1.15 Volt is the 'Sweet Spot' for this processor, you can crank upto 4.6 GHz (depending on processor lottery, some variation will exist between processors and future steppings), while still keeping temperatures reasonable and not compromising long term reliability.Reply

Absolutely love the methodical nature of your investigations and your understanding of the subject matter Dr. Cutress. With it and the various ways you've illustrated things, it's givenme in a very short time what seems to be a good understanding of the basics of how Ivy and the current 22nm Tri-Gate processors behave, and how to best overclock them.

No mean feat considering the differences. Thanks very, very much :)Reply

Everything I've read about high temperatures on IB suggests that there is a large amount of thermal resistance between the active parts of the IB chip and the outside surface of the integrated heat spreader (IHS) to which we attach our heatsinks.It is suggested that the IB heatspreader is not soldered onto the chip, but uses thermal paste of unknown quality. That would go a long way to explaining the temperature problems found when overclocking IB.Of course there are other factors such as the increased power per unit area of the chip, and heat may be trapped by the 3-dimensional nature of the new transistors.

If you can do so, please pop the lid off your press-release ES CPU and re-run some of the tests with your heatsink mounted directly on the CPU die with top-quality TIM paste. What will happen to the CPU otherwise? If it has to go back to Intel, so what? They gave it to you to test. Well, you'll have really tested it :)Reply

How hard would it be to remove the IHS and just connect the heatsink directly to the chip (like in the old days)? Keep in mind the physical size of the die is smaller now so you'll have less surface area to work with. Add in the new tri-gate process and how well that will dissipate heat and you have a heat-gate (tm, hehe) trifecta.Reply

i think after amd, now intel crashed headlong into the 'wall' of Moore. the amount of ipc increase we might still see over the next 10 years might be much smaller than most people realize. the amount of clock increase we might see over the next 10 years might be much smaller than most people realize. ok, they can still add more cores, but for 9 of 10 applications, 10 % ipc/clock increase will do more than doubling the number of cores.

implications of moore's law already failing this bad in 2011-2012, which is much earlier than anticipated could be 'dramatic' .Reply

Would be better for new builders to buy a 2500k instead? It seems like there's a lot more risk involved with Ivy Bridge, esp. for people new to overclocking (like myself). Not really sure what to do from this article.

"Increased density and new transistor technology can certainly give rise to more heat. But we've seen these things before, and each time, cooling and packaging technology manage to cope with the resulting output. What could be holding Ivy Bridge back? It could be the fact that Intel decided to use thermal paste instead of the usual fluxless solder (you'll need to have a solid grasp of Japanese to understand the original article, or use Google Translate) between the CPU die and heat spreader.

Using a box knife (we do not recommend doing this at home), the author of the linked story pried the heat spreader away from the chip and was able to replace the cheap paste Intel used, trying out both OCZ Freeze Extreme and Coollaboratory Liquid Pro thermal pastes. The OCZ offering allowed for 1.55 V at 4.9 GHz, while the Coollaboratory material ramped up to 5.0 GHz, operating stably. This was accomplished even with air cooling, although the author did not use a stock heat sink, opting for a Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E instead (Ed.: this information was pulled from the original Impress PC Watch site with Google's rather shaky translation of Japanese). If there is a smoking gun in this equation, we think this is it, especially considering that the researchers at Impress PC Watch managed 20% more efficient cooling."